Ottoman Armenian casualties
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| Armenian Genocide |
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| Early elements |
| Hamidian Massacres · 1896 Ottoman Bank Takeover · Adana Massacre · Young Turk Revolution |
| The Genocide |
| April 24, 1915 · Tehcir Law · Armenian casualties of deportations · Ottoman Armenian casualties |
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| Responsible parties |
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The estimation of Armenian deaths between 1914 to 1923 during what is called the Armenian Genocide and what followed as the Turkish War of Independence is a subject of controversy. Most estimates for the losses between 1915 to 1917-18 range from 600,000 —claimed mostly by the Government of Turkey and Turkish national historians— and from 1.2 million to 1.5 million by most of the international community and scholarship. <ref>Carl Bialik, "Killings From 90 Years Ago Haunt Turkey in its EU Bid ," The Wall Street Journal, May 16 2005.</ref> This article examines Armenian mortality during the final years of the Ottoman Empire.
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[edit] Armenian casualties from 1914 to 1917-18
[edit] Ottoman and Turkish estimates
[edit] The Official Ottoman statistics
The official Ottoman statistics compiled for the period between 1915 to 1917-18 were of 800,000 killed, which suggests that possibly over a million perished. This figure originates from Djemal's bureau’s compilation statistics. The results have been published in the official Ottoman gazette.<ref>Ottoman Gazette Takvimi Vekâyi No. 3909, July 21 1920, pp. 3, 4. Cited published in Alemdar, March 15 1919</ref>
It was allegedly the result of a commission formed by the interior minister Mustafa Arif. It is said that they relied on reports and statistics they have compiled in a period of two months, in March 14, 1919, the results were made public by Djemal. This same figure has been mentioned in Rauf Orbay's own memoirs.<ref>Rauf Orbay, Rauf Orbay'ın Hatıraları, (Vol. 3), Yakın Tarihimiz, İstanbul, 1962 p. 179, he writes as to what Mustafa Kemal told him about the Armenians.</ref> The initial results apparently represented those that were “massacred” during the deportation, without any indication as to the total number of people having perished; Mustafa Kemal, during a conversation he had with Major General Harbord, the chief of the American Military Mission to Armenia, in September 1919, repeated the same number.<ref>Yakm Tarihimiz, 3, (1962), p. 179, cited in Vahakn N. Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus, Providence, RI: Berghan Books, 1995, p. 234</ref>
However, following the dissolution of the military tribunal, those figures were reinterpreted continuously as to finally represent the total number of Armenian casualties. The Turkish author Taner Akçam refers to a Turkish military published by Lt. Col. Nihat in 1928, in which the figure of 800,000 no longer represented those as "massacred" or "killed", but simply those who perished. Then the historian Bayur in a famous work wrote: "800,000 Armenians and 200,000 Greeks died as a result of deportations or died in labor brigades." Bayur concluded: "According to our official sources, these numbers are correct."<ref>Yusuf Hikmet Bayur, Türk Inkilabi Tarihi, Vol. III, Sec. IV, p. 787</ref>
[edit] Other Ottoman sources
While the official figures were of 800,000 killed, there were many unofficial numbers presented during the war by some Ottoman authorities--Talat, for instance, presented the figure of 300,000-- but there is no indication as to how those figures were obtained. This figure is currently the one used often by the Turkish government officials.
[edit] Justin McCarthy estimates
Justin McCarthy's figures are often cited, particularly in works that could be considered to support the Turkish government thesis that the Armenian massacres do not constitute genocide. Even though Professor McCarthy is a Western academic, his numbers of Armenian casualties are derived from his statistics of Armenian population, which in turn were derived from Ottoman records (by applying correction values). Some scholars therefore consider his figures to be an Ottoman source rather than a Western one.
McCarthy calculated an estimate of the pre-war Armenian population, then subtracted his estimate of survivors, arriving at a figure of a little less than 600,000 for Armenian casualties for the period 1914 to 1922.<ref>Justin McCarthy, The End of Ottoman Anatolia, in Muslims and Minorities: The Population of Ottoman Anatolia and the End of the Empire, New York Univ. Press, 1983.</ref> But as in the cases of his population, his statistics are controversial. In a more recent essay, he projected that if the Armenian records of 1913 were accurate, 250,000 more deaths should be added, for a total of 850,000.<ref>Justin McCarthy, The Population of the Ottoman Armenians, in The Armenians in the Late Ottoman Period, The Turkish Historical Society For The Council Of Culture, Arts And Publications Of The Grand National Assembly Of Turkey, Ankara, 2001, pp. 65-86</ref> McCarthy's figures don't include the Armenian population losses from the Russian Armenia lands loss in the profit of the Ottoman Empire, and he is also criticized for overestimating the survivor table. Frédéric Paulin goes as far as comparing his methodology with Rassinier's method in calculating the European Jewry losses during World War II.<ref>Frédéric Paulin, Négationnisme et théorie des populations stables : le cas du génocide arménien, in Hervé Lebras (dir.), L’Invention des populations. Biologie, Idéologie et politique, Editions Odile Jacob, 2000.</ref>
[edit] Ottoman allies estimates
[edit] Germany
Of all the nations involved in the war, Germany is considered by many to be the best placed, besides the Ottoman Empire, to have access to most of the deportation and murder sites. Some consider this to be the reason why, from all the nations, Germany seemed to provide the most complete and highest estimates of Armenian losses during the war.
A report provided that as soon as February 1916, 1.5 million Armenians were destroyed. <ref>Written on July 2 1916 and submitted to the Foreign Office on July 14 1916 titled: Volkswirtschaftliche Studien in der Türkei, A. A. Türkei, 134/35, A18613.</ref> A report in May 27, 1916, by Foreign Office Intelligence Director Erzberger provided the same figure,<ref>A.A. Türkei 183/42, A13959, May 27 1916 report.</ref> as did an October 4, 1916 report by the German Interim Ambassador to Turkey, Radowitz, again with 1.5 million as the estimate of Armenian's having perished.<ref>A.A. Türkei 183/44. A27493, October 4 1916 report.</ref> It seems that the generally cited 1.5 million figure had originated from those German sources. What might be considered by many one of the most balanced German account is those of the German major Endres, who served in the Turkish army, and who has estimated the number of Armenians having lost their lives during the war to be 1.2 million.<ref>Carl Franz Endres, Die Türkei. Munich, CH Beck, 1918, p. 161</ref> The same figure was mentioned during the Yozgat trial,<ref>Cited in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Volume 11, Number 1, Spring 1997, Vahakn N. Dadrian, The Turkish Military Tribunal's Prosecution of the Authors of the Armenian Genocide: Four Major Court-Martial Series, Genocide Study Project, H. F. Guggenheim Foundation.</ref> as well as presented during the Permanent Peoples Tribunal<ref>Gérard Chaliand, Le Crime de silence : le génocide des Arméniens: Tribunal permanent des peuples, [Session de Paris, 13-16 avril 1984] ; pref. de Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Flammarion, 1984.</ref> and often cited elsewhere.
[edit] Austria-Hungary
While Austria did not present a wide range of statistics and estimates, some exist.
The Austrian consul at Trabzon and Samsun, Dr. Kwatkiowski on March 13, 1918 reported to Vienna restricting himself to the six eastern provinces, Trabzon and Samsun district, that from the million deported, most died, while Austria-Hungary's Adrianople (Edirne) consul Dr. Nadamlenzki reported that for the entire Ottoman Empire 1.5 million were already deported.<ref>Austrian Foreign Ministry Archives 12 Türkei/380, ZI.17/pol and 12 Türkei/463, Z.94/P.</ref> The Austrian Vice Marashal Pomiankowski estimated the Armenian losses to be about a million.<ref>Joseph Pomiankowski, Der Zusammenbruch des Ottomanischen Reiches, Graz, Austria, 1969, p. 160(originally printed in 1928)</ref>
[edit] The allies and neutral parties
Contrary to the Ottoman official statistics, and German wide ranges of figures, most of the allies' statistics of Armenian losses were incomplete. The reason is believed to be the allies limited access to reliable sources of information within the Empire, being the “enemy” sides, they were more restricted to investigate. But still, it is important to note that there were wildly used sources.
One of those was Toynbee numbers. He presented 600,000 for 1915,<ref>The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, Documents presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs By Viscount Bryce, London 1916</ref> while his work is considered by many to be well researched, it doesn't includes the Armenian victims from 1916 to 1917-18, as professor Melson writes: "Toynbee’s description and analysis stop with the winter of 1915 and the spring of 1916, by which time the bulk of the Armenian population has been killed or deported. As valuable as it is, this work cannot take into account what subsequently happened to the deportees in 1916, nor can it take into account the Armenians who were deported from some of the major urban areas after 1916."<ref>Robert Melson, Revolution and Genocide: On the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust, University Of Chicago Press, October 15 1992, p. 147</ref>
Another source of information widely used is the King Crane Commission, but with conflicting numbers, a million is presented as losses during the war in one cases in the same work, but in the same commission, it is reported that the Hamidian massacres are included. Wherever or not, the Armenian casualties were under evaluated to increase purposely the Armenian population to support the foundation of an Armenia is still a matter of debate, since the Armenian losses of a million during the war has been added for what the commission call "justice" in one cases, and in what regards the Armenian population, the Adana massacres, and Hamidian massacres resulting to what appears to be an attempt of population maximization.<ref>Harry N. Howard, The King-Crane Commission: An American Inquiry in the Middle East, Khayats, 1963 p. 212 includes them all, but The King-Crane Commission Report, August 28 1919 is more conflicting in one instances, where it consider the million as the result of the war,(as if excluding the other massacres) and there is no way to know wherever or not it was a mistake.</ref> The Armenian estimates were on the same direction. At times, they were even as low as 500,000<ref>A. P. Hacobian, Armenia and the War: An Armenian's Point of View with an Appeal to Britain and the Coming Peace Conference, George H. Doran Company, New York. 1918. He presents as range from 500,000 to 800,000, and presents the cases of the possibility of the construction of an Armenia. How far those politically motivated figures influenced commissions reports of mortality, such as those of the King Crane is not well known, apparently it was considered due to Mr. Aharonian and Boghos Nubar presentation of the cases, in this regard, it is relevant to read the British views on the problem of Kurdistan, and on Boghos Nubar Pasha, in December 1919, see United Kingdom, Foreign Office, Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919-1939. Edited by E. L. Woodward and Rohan Butler. First Series ( London, H. M. S. O., 1952), IV, 920-24. Later cited as British Documents, 1919-1939.</ref> when the Armenian high mortality was threatening the possibility of founding an Armenia compromising as well of Ottoman territories, and in other instances to over a million.<ref>Boghos Nubar, the head of the Armenian delegation at the Paris Peace conference, wrote in The Times of London in 30 January 1919, that “over a million out of a total Armenian population… have lost their lives in and through the war.” Apparently, when it was noted that a possibility of an Armenia as wanted by the Armenian delegation was impossible, the Armenian delegation changed it's tactic, as to not minimise the number of victims, but rather use them and indirectly accuse the allies, and expect that they might consider Armenia as reparation for the losses.</ref> The United States figures for the period between 1915 to 1917 varies widely, but most figures contend to a million or over. The League of Nations provided a million as a figure,<ref>The extend of the Armenian tragedy is described in Fridtjof Nansen(Nobel Peace Prize and then League of Nations High commissioner) book: “Armenia and the Near East” translted from (l'Arménie et le Proche Orient, Paris, 1923). Nansen conclude his work by the following remarks: "Woe to the Armenians, that they were ever drawn into European politics! It would have been better for them if the name of Armenia had never been uttered by any European diplomatist."</ref> but the list of refugees in the Caucasus and Russian Armenia who were not from Ottoman Empire was not clearly defined, which suggest that the list of 400,000 to 420,000 Ottoman Armenian's<ref>See: League of Nations: Assembly: Fifth Committee published reports: Armenian and Russian Refugee Problems; Report... Geneva: np, 1926. Settlement of Armenian Refugees; Report... Geneva: Imprimerie Kundig, 1926. Transfer of Armenian Refugees to the Caucasus and Creation of an Armenian National Home in That Region; Report... Geneva: np, 1924.</ref> could have contained Armenian's who were possibly not in proper term Ottoman Armenian, which may explain why other estimates projected the casualties over the million drawn by the League.
[edit] Armenian casualties, 1917-18 to 1923
While the Ottoman official statistics covered 1917-18, and some of German figures, most other figures excluded them. Another problem remains, as to the availability of the sources for what followed 1917. More recent scholars have called this period the second phase of the Armenian Genocide. Melson, for instance, provide' a rough estimate of 500,000.<ref>In his book: Revolution and Genocide: On the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust, University Of Chicago Press, October 15 1992</ref> On the other hand, those estimates have no archival grounds, for this reason some researchers considers any such figures could be near to the actual casualty figures or far from it.
[edit] Armenian casualties outside of the Ottoman borders during Ottoman invasion
Few commissions were formed though, such as the investigations for Kars and Alexandropol. The Alexandropol investigation by its nature is seen as the most serious such endeavor. It presented 60,000 as directed killed, in a total of 150,000 victims which condition would have ultimately led to their death sentences.<ref>Soviet Archival records: CGAKA, f. 109, op. 3, d. 241, 1. 12. / Politarxiv MID SSSR., inv. No. 53351, 1.14. and Arxiv vnesnej politiki SSSR, f. 132, op. 4, p. 6, d. 14, 1. 52.</ref> But the investigation apparently came to an end abruptly. The Germans on the other hand, not presenting any numbers, have reported Russian Armenia condition, in what they considered as an Ottoman attempt to destroy it.<ref>Otto von Lossow, Major General, Military attaché reported that the Turkish government was also attempting "the total extermination of the Armenians in Transcaucasia also" (German Foreign Ministry Archives. A. A. Türkei 183/51, A20698, May 15 1918. His first report.) He also report: "Talàt's government party wants to destroy all Armenians, not only in Turkey, but also outside Turkey."(Deutsches Zentralarchiv (Potsdam) Bestand Reichskanzlei No. 2458/9, Blatt 202, June 3 1918 report, p. 2.)</ref> Without taking in account the Ottoman excursion of what was considered as Persian Armenia.
[edit] Ottoman Armenian casualties
Most of the victims could be counted in Cilicia,<ref>See: Stanley Elphinstone Kerr, The Lions of Marash: Personal Experiences with American Near East Relief, 1919-1922 (New York: State University of New York, 1973); Susan E. Kerr, Letters of Stanley E. Kerr: Volunteer Work with the "Near East Relief" among Armenians in Marash, 1919-1920, Edited and with a Historical Introduction to the Turkish-Armenian Conflict (Diss., History Honors Program, Oberlin College, 1980)</ref> as well as the Eastern zone, and without ignoring Smyrna (İzmir)<ref>George Horton, The Blight of Asia, Bobbs-Merril Company, 1926. Also, Dobkin, Marjorie Housepian, SMYRNA 1922: The Destruction of a City, Kent State U Press, 1988.</ref> during what was reported as massacres and what followed with the burning of the Armenian and Greek quarters of the city (see Great Fire of Smyrna). While the total of casualties in this category is estimated to tens of thousands to over hundred of thousand, the number of victims is not well established.
[edit] The Armenian genocide: total Armenian casualties, 1914 to 1923
While there is no clear consensus as to how many Armenians lost their lives during what is called the Armenian genocide and what followed, there seems to be a consensus among Western scholars with the exception of few dissident and Turkish national historians, as to when covering all the period between 1914 to 1923, over a million Armenian might have perished, and the tendency seem recently to be, either presenting 1.2 million as figure or even 1.5 million, while more moderately, "over a million" is presented, as the Turkish historian Fikret Adanir provides as estimation, but excludes what followed 1917.
[edit] Armenian casualties revisited
Far from finding the exact figure of Armenian casualties, some researchers have at least tried to provide some figures of losses during the war and what followed based on some sources. But most of it is rough estimates or are based on calculations of others. An example here might be the cases of Justin McCarthy, since he is one of the rare researcher that has worked with Ottoman records, various Ottomanists have recycled his figures. Scholarly consensus, however, has largely followed the conclusions presented by Levon Marashlian's study (arriving at a figure of 1.2 million), which claimed that McCarthy's approach suffers from a fatal methodological flaw: in basing his results on inaccurate records. Marashlian maintain there was a reciprocal undercounting on the Ottoman's government's part on the one hand, and underreporting by Armenians, on the other.<ref>Levon Marashlian, Politics and Demography: Armenians, Turks and Kurds in the Ottoman Empire Zoryan Institute (1991) ISBN 0-916431-30-4</ref> McCarthy, nonetheless, claims that his results and the Ottoman adult male records were accurate. Others go on to criticize McCarthy in not only having undercounted the prewar Armenian population, but also overcounting the survivors. McCarthy, for his part, argue that his works are too easily labeled by academia as a Turkish-apologist, and complains of a lack of scholarly debate.
